[Coco] Stand-alone DriveWire devices.

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Fri, 2004-09-17 at 08:47, alsplace at pobox.com wrote:
> It dawns on me that there must be some really cheap PIC-type 
> programmable device with memory storage and some programmable CPU.  
> Some of these gadgets are very cheap.  If there was such a device, it 
> might be interesting to make a standalone "DriveWire" hardware unit 
> that could just plug into a CoCo's serial port.  Anyone out there 
> familiar with the state of the art for BASIC STAMP or PIC type chips?  
> It would just need to have a fast serial port and some form of backed 
> up memory (flash, battery backed RAM?).
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Also, is there an unofficial HDB-DOS that speaks DriveWire instead of 
> SCSI/IDE?
> 
>      -- Allen
> 

For a uC based solution I'd suggest probably a PIC or AVR and some
industrial flash chips soldered on the board or a consumer grade flash
slot, like MMC/SD/CF.

Since we're not addressing the flash directly, consumer grade flash is
probably the way to go.

A simple cheap serial flash reader/writer would be useful to a lot of
vintage hardware users as permanent storage.

-- John.